Thoughts on the coming rejuvenation technology revolution

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Hi my name is Jim and this blog is where I will place some of the longer or more thoughtful comments that I have made on other people’s blogs (mainly FightAging.org) on the topic of life extension/rejuvenation biotechnology. In the future if now being trialled monoclonal antibodies can deal with my severe allergic respiratory disease, I may use this blog to record any fund raising efforts I make. I hope to raise $2,000 per year from my friends for a sponsored activity of some sort and donate it to the SENS Research Foundation for research into breaking collagen sugar glucospane crosslinks in the skin, making people’s skin perhaps look a bit younger. As my friends are frugal bastards this would probably involve some pain!

For those wondering about Michael Rae’s response to my question, the question was:

“Surely calcification is an 8th class of damage?”

Michael’s response was:

“Hi Jim,

Sorry for the delay in responding …

I think, first, we need to disaggregate (no pun intended) the general category of calcification. There are quite a few tissues that calcify in most or all aging people, and the causes and nature of the structural disruption caused are quite distinct — including several mechanistically-distinct forms of arterial calcification. It’s unlikely that all of these are true aging damage.

However, it’s quite plausible that at least some of them are. The key question is whether they are really an intrinsically more or less irreversible change, or if like many other things that go wrong in aging they’re sufficiently dependent on other, primary age changes that they would revert to the youthful, healthy norm if the original insult were resolved.

The more well-understood form of arterial calcification, for instance, is pretty clearly secondary to atherosclerosis, and driven by inflammation; once we clear out the foam cells and allow them to egress and the body begins to heal the lesion, might calcified tissue revert?

Barring good evidence, we’re remaining agnostic on this in each case. I for one lean more toward several of them being real damage, whereas Dr. de Grey leans more toward them needing the ongoing reinforcement of the aging-deranged signaling milieu. As with many other things, “solvitur ambulando” is the key: the answer will certainly become clearer as we start actually rejuvenating the body, if it doesn’t for other reasons first.”